Liberty Training Rifle

[Trigger Monkey]

I got it in my head to put togther a "Liberty Training Rifle" because I wanted a semi-auto mag fed .22LR to have fun with. Since I had a complete 10/22 bolt, charging handle, trigger assembly, and some other small parts laying around it seemed like the logical path.

I picked up a blem 10/22 receiver from S&P Outfitters, the barrel came from Numrich, and at first I picked up carbine stock at a local pawn shop and did some work on it, however it turns out the carbine stock wasn't for me. I found a Birch Sporter stock online for a decent price and bought that since the dimensions seemed a little more adult friendly.

The barrel cam sans iron sights so I bought the obligatory Tech Sights, TSR100 specifically. A small section of Weaver rail in the front is in case I want to mount a red dot. I don't think it'll be able to cowitness but I'll cross that bridge if I get there.

The trigger group had been previously modified with a Power Custom hammer and sear. This dropped the trigger pull weight to about 3 1/2 lbs. I added in an auto bolt release for convenience during reloading.

Not satisfied with just dropping the barreled action into the stock I free floated the barrel and bedded the action. It fits like a glove, there's zero movement in the receiver if I try to flex the barrel at the end of the stock.

It took a fair bit of sanding to get even reveals, leaving the barrel channel a bright blonde. A little stain and Tru Oil and you'd hardly know.

To help with cleaning, I drilled a hole in the back of the receiver for a cleaning rod to pass thru to the barrel. It's centered from side to side and up from the bottom about .775".

I haven't had a chance to get it out to the range yet but I have high hopes that it won't disappoint.

 

[Trigger Monkey]

It seems to shoot pretty good....

 

[Aftermath]

Looks decent.
I have considered boring into the tail of the receiver as a cleaning aid. I prefer that all of the "things" going in the barrel all go the same direction...breach to muzzle.

 

[Trigger Monkey]

It's pretty easy to drill the hole, I did it with my other 10/22 and it's much nicer to use my normal cleaning gear then try to use a boresnake or something similar going through the ejection port.

 

[Aftermath]

It's pretty easy to drill the hole, I did it with my other 10/22 and it's much nicer to use my normal cleaning gear then try to use a boresnake or something similar going through the ejection port.

I'm going to do it, you have me convinced. That's how those things should come from Ruger. Did you bore a 22 cal hole or something larger? I was really thinking to go as large as possible, just for the heck of it, but I don't recall the measurements I made a couple years ago when I was getting closer to actually doing it. Also thinking I'll make a sort of plug to occupy that open hole until I want to push something down the bore.

 

[Trigger Monkey]

I started out marking the location for the hole with a pencil and hitting it with a center punch, then made a pilot hole, 7/32" I think, and then used a 1/4" drill bit. A 1/4" hole is plenty big for a cleaning rod and I could've left it at that but I countersunk the hole a little and hit with some aluminum black. There's really no reason for a plug, the bolt stop goes right in front of the hole and it's below the stock line on top of that.

 

[jbell]

If I remember correctly I think Kidd receivers are drilled for cleaning also. Cool project, I love the 10/22 platform.

 

[Trigger Monkey]

The Brownells 10/22 receiver is also drilled for a cleaning rod too.

I don't know if I'm going to shoot any Appleseed events with it but it was fun to put together and I'm just glad the mish mash of parts yielded an accurate rifle.

 

[obx22]

Best feature of the 10/22 is they are so tolerant of mistakes or abuse. All barrels are not created equal though, and in my experience only about 1 in 30 is what I would call accurate. If you have an accurate barrel, then you can experiment with getting the most out of the gun. You will find that these rifles are VERY tolerant of different bedding styles or no bedding at all! I once bounced a very accurate barreled action across several stocks in a day at the range, at 50yds the zero didn’t shift, nor did the group size!
Don’t be afraid to read up on and try different methods to improve the trigger pull. Replacement parts and upgrades are readily available from a wide variety of sources. Above all else, have fun with it and learn

 

[Trigger Monkey]

I'd never bedded a 10/22 previous to this so when I was researching it there were so many rabbit holes to go down. Rear bedding button, rear bedding block, floating the action, doing a barrel pressure pad, pillars, etc... I ended up saying screw it and treated it like a CF barreled action, bed the tang, bed the front with a barrel pad, and torque it to something reasonable. I side stepped a pillar because I figured the JB Weld made a good enough bearing surface and 20 in/lbs wasn't going to compress it enough to worry about. I'm happy with where the gun is at right now, the trigger pull is smooth and predictable but I may swap the trigger shoe for a flat faced one. Other than that I may do some reliability upgrades down the road like a VQ firing pin and extractor.

Future plans are to try some Norma Tac-22 through the rifle since my Bergara likes it it'd be nice to be able to use the same ammo between the two guns. I'm also going to dope the rifle a bit, the Tech Sights have a "long range" aperture that can be flipped up to provide additional elevation, approximately 6 MOA according to the instructions, however when I flipped it up at 25 yards it was more like 7 MOA. With CCI SV that equates to an 85 yd far zero and with Mini Mags that equals about 110 yards so I'm going to see how accurate that is.